Environmental part of the SOTU?
Trying to be as generous as I can, it's a D.
Solar mentioned in passing.
Passed wind, entirely.
Big applause for new nuclear power plants, though.
And drill baby, drill!
Yes, this bone was thrown out.
It means continued investment in advanced biofuels and clean coal[say what!?] technologies. And yes, it means passing a comprehensive energy and climate bill with incentives that will finally make clean energy the profitable kind of energy in America.
Not enough, Mr President.
Changes in the world's weather climate are going to be encroaching upon national priorities very soon. We already have measurable impact on American agricultural output. Changes and unpredictability of expected weather patterns are taking stronger grasp on growing seasons, and effect crops vulnerable to extremes of weather, both hot and cold, wet and dry.
With time, these changes, this variability is going to increase and become serious economic issues, as well as humanitarian and national security ones. "Making clean energy 'profitable'", when one isn't willing to look at the fully loaded costs of how current energy use is destroying our planet is a bad bargain.
We need to have an active attitude in this country, changing our current national defense posture into one of national aid posture: because much of tomorrow's national security issues are going to be directly related to providing aid after environmental disasters. Floods, wind storms, tornadoes, massive fires - in foreign affairs, it will be more over wars over resources like food and water, pestilence and disease.
I was sorely disappointed in the lack of vision by the President, looking towards the future as far as environmental issues go. I felt he presented it as a 'talking point that must be covered'. There was no fire in his belly when he talked about any of the environmental concerns [all 13 words of it]. The silence from the Joint Session was deafening, too.
We ignore Nature and what we're doing to it at our peril.
It's such a shame we're consigning this planet's human race to an ugly death, because this is what we're embracing by staying on the course we're headed on.